Enrique Borgos
] Enrique Borgos studied biochemistry and genetic entomology on Escobar, his native home. As a natural extension of his doctoral research, he created a species of beetle that he named "butter bugs." These beetles were designed to eat Earth-derived plant matter and convert it to nutritionally perfect food for humans. He created a company to produce and sell his bugs, but unfortunately, due to a poor understanding of business economics, he sold several times the value of the company as stock, which resulted in his arrest for fraud. Mark Vorkosigan bailed him out and the two of them left for Barrayar. They set up shop on Barrayar, with considerably more success than on Escobar, at least in part due to Kareen Koudelka's skill in rustling up highly talented help, such as Ma Kosti for food product design and Ekaterin Vorsoisson for improvements in marketability of the bugs. By the end of A Civil Campaign, he was establishing a romantic relationship with Martya Koudelka - or more accurately the assertive Martya had set her cap for him. Later, in "The Flowers of Vashnoi", the two had married. According to "The Flowers of Vashnoi," he was not yet in his thirties at that time. Behind the scenes On Tor reread, comment 40 the author has stated this about Enrique and his butter bug scheme: :Mark and Enrique’s midnight raid on his padlocked lab has a real-world source, by the way. Back in the 50s and 60s, my dad, a professor of engineering at OSU, had a visiting German colleague, Dr. Friedrich Förster, who impressed the heck out of us three kids by walking on his hands across our living room. (Things fall out of one’s trouser pockets when one does that, btw.) In 1965, we returned the visit as a family to his home in West Germany, where, among other things, he took us out and showed us where his start-up lab had been. Typical tech start-up, over a dingy garage with an outside stairway leading up to the door. Co-equal in my memory with the hand-walking is my memory of his miming on the stairs how, in 1946, he performed a one-man midnight raid to get his equipment back, as it has been locked down by the Occupation military, because, German Scientist. With this sneaked-out seed, he was able to start his very successful post-war company for nondestructive testing, his specialty and my Dad’s. :His company is still in business, it seems, according to my internet search a moment ago. So there you go. :(Enrique’s civilian version does indeed owe something to the classic movie The Producers. In his defense, I must point out that he was only 24, he’d been head-down in the most complicated science in existence for years leaving very little attention for anything else, and he was desperate to realize his vision, which was so close. And he quite intended to pay everyone back, eventually. Enrique also does not make the same mistake twice, so Barrayar won’t see any scheme like that from him again.) Appearances * A Civil Campaign *"The Flowers of Vashnoi" Category:Escobarans Category:Barrayarans